Creation Science Rebuttals

Technical Journal (TJ)

The Permian Extinction

From TJ, Volume 15, Issue
1, April 2001

The multiple Ice Ages, and multiple extinctions of earth's past are
frequently the target of young earth creationist ministries. Such an
attack can be seen in the pages of Technical Journal (TJ) in the April 2001
issue.1 Young earth
writer Emil Silvestru examines the Permian extinction event, and attempts to
relate it to the Flood of Noah.

Background

The
Permian extinction event occurred near the boundary of the
Permian-Triassic periods, approximately 251 million years ago. In this
event, 90-95 percent of all marine life, and 70 percent of all terrestrial
vertebrates became extinct. As Silvestru points out, there have been
nine extinction events in earth's history.

The purpose of this article in TJ is to provide a young earth comment on a
National Geographic article dealing with the extinction. Silvestru
points out that an asteroid/meteor strike is one of the major theories
behind this event, but it is not the only theory. The evidence for an
asteroid strike consists of a supposed impact site in Australia, and the
presence of shocked quartz crystals.

Another key feature that he points out is the massive amount of volcanism at
the time, as can be seen in the Siberian Traps, an area with enough lava to
cover the earth in six meters of lava.

The Theories

After giving some background information, Silvestru gives the prevailing
theories concerning the Permian extinction. These are not significant
to this rebuttal, so I will only briefly mention them.

The asteroid impact theory says that an impact in Australia caused the
atmosphere to be clouded with gases and dust, triggering global cooling and
acid snow and rain. This was followed with fires and rotting trees,
which raised CO2 levels, leading to global warming.

The ocean anoxia theory says that the circulation of the oceans stalled for
an unknown reason. Without circulation, oxygen levels in the water
dropped, CO2 increased in the oceans, starving the organisms from
lack of oxygen.

The volcanic eruption theory points to the Siberian Traps, with rising CO2
leading to global warming.

"One BIG Catastrophe"

SIlvestru says that the nine extinctions causes uniformitarian geologists
major problems. This is because the nine extinction events are now
thought to have happened as a result of catastrophic events. However,
this poses no problems at all...after all, it is uniformitarian geologists
who are proposing these catastrophies!

Geologists recognize that there have been many catastrophies throughout
earth's history. We see them in the rock record. However, these
catastrophies are proceeded with slow, uniformitarian evidences, and
followed by the same. Silvestru wonders if "their uniformitarian
views...(are) bubbling away like volatiles in a degassing magma."
Nothing could be further from the truth. We geologists are quite happy
with these catastrophic events within our uniformitarian framework!

The solution, according to Silvestru, is the
Flood. He says creationists (young earth) have addressed all these
catastrophies within their Biblical flood. He suggests that the
volcanism could have been triggered by the impact of asteroids during the
flood.

Here is the problem with the theory. Consider
the column at right. This column is a simplified geologic column,
representing the rock layers of the earth over the last 540 million years.
The red lines are the nine extinction events. In between all these
events, is a normal period of slow, gradual deposition, many millions of
years in duration.

If the flood caused the extinctions, why do we have nine
separate, distinct events in the fossil record? The flood was a year
long, single event, and would have caused a single extinction event.

Furthermore, consider the extinction of the
dinosaurs, which would be the second red line from the top. All the
dinosaur fossils, including trace fossils (footprints) are in the layer of
rock between the second and third red line. How did they survive, and
leave footprints, on top of rocks that young earth creationists claim were
deposited by the flood? If you look at the dinosaur footprints and
fossils of the western United States, there is over 8,000 feet of
flood-deposited sediment below ALL of the dinosaur evidences. How did
they survive this first 8,000 feet of deposition during the flood?

In the end, Silvestru puts it all together for the
geologic world to finally understand what happened. "Asteroid
impacts at the beginning of the Flood triggered catastrophic plate tectonics
and the rapid movement of the continents. This severely disrupted
oceanic circulation and lead to the ocean anoxia that poisoned much marine
life." However, as is common with young earth claims, they give you
bits and pieces, but don't combine the bits and pieces, because they would
contradict each other. Creationist scientists Baumgardner and Barnette
did a study of the
“Patterns of Ocean Circulation Over the Continents During Noah’s Flood,”,
which showed that ocean currents were as high as 194 miles per hour,
centered in large gyres over the continental edges. Young earth
creationists rely on this study to provide the necessary erosional forces to
erode rock and deposit it elsewhere during the flood. However,
Silvestru is proposing that there was a lack of ocean circulation, leading
to the ocean anoxia. Young earth creationists, you cannot have it both
ways! Unfortunately for Silvestru, the Baumgarder/Barnette study is a
good one, and gives an excellent picture of what would happen in a globe
full of water. Thus, this entire theory proposed by Silvestru can be
trashed.

There is one other major problem for Silvestru's
theory. Silvestru alludes to it, when he says "The Ice Age was by far
the most important aftermath (climate-wise) of the Flood." Silvestru's
model, and the model proposed by Michael Oard for the Flood-induced ice age,
both rely on great amounts of volcanism. There are two problems with
this. First, there is no evidence of a post-extinction ice age at the
end of the Permian extinction. Even more importantly, volcanism has a
byproduct...the introduction of massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere...a greenhouse gas. Analysis of the Flood model by
geologist Glenn Morton shows that global
temperatures after a worldwide flood with volcanism would have essentially
roasted Noah alive. The young earth model would produce a hot earth,
not a cold one.

Conclusion

This article has given no evidence that would cause
anyone to doubt the old age of the earth. Silvestru's model for the
extinctions, with the global Flood of Noah, is unworkable, and does not even
agree with other young earth studies. The old earth theory, with a
local flood, is a much better fit with the scientific evidence, and you can
still believe in a literal Genesis, and an inerrant Word of God.

1 Silvestru, Emil, The Permian
Extinction: National Geographic Comes Close to the Truth, TJ
15(1): April 2001. Available online at answersingenesis.org/tj/v15/i1/permian.asp

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